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The Alchemist’s Nightmare
The real difficulty, I’ve found, in pasting passages from books here is that few paragraphs fully explain themselves. A paragraph is a vehicle taking you from one idea, the preceding paragraph, to the...
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The Grape and the Grain
“Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,” as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the...
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New Bibles for a New Babel
“Four hundred years ago, just as William Shakespeare was reaching the height of his powers and showing the new scope and variety of the English language, and just as ‘England’ itself was becoming more...
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These Contradictions
“‘Let’s just go in and enjoy ourselves,’ Yvonne [his mother] had said after a long moment when the Hitchens family had silently reviewed the menu — actually of the prices not the courses — outside a...
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Anti-Semitism Is Not a Mere Prejudice
“But the Jews of the Arab lands were expelled again in revenge for the defeat of Palestinian nationalism in 1947–48, and now the most evil and discredited fabrication of Jew-baiting Christian...
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Friendship, Love, Irony, Humor, Parenthood, Literature, and Music
“A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called...
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The Undiscovered Country
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes...
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The Only Conversation Worth Having
“I’ll close on the implied question that Bill asked me earlier. Why don’t you accept this wonderful offer? Why wouldn’t you like to meet Shakespeare, for example? I don’t know if you really think that...
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Infallibility
I don’t wish any ill on any fellow primate or mammal of mine, so I don’t at all look forward to the death of Joseph Ratzinger, I don’t, or any other pope, not really, except for one tiny reason which...
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Osama Is Not My Brother
“It was mid-October 2001, and night was closing in on the border city of Peshawar, in Pakistan, as my friend – a reporter and political man of letters – approached a market stall and began to haggle...
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The Central Paradox of Antisemitism
Excerpts from Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis discussing Judaism and Antisemitism at Jewish Book Week in London in 2007: “Saul Bellow once said to me, privately, that without Israel, Jewish...
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Our Love for London
“That’s why it’s so appalling to see so many liberals making excuses for bin Ladenism and Jihadism as if it was some kind of fucking liberation theology, which it is not. It’s the most reactionary...
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The Challenge of Nietzsche
Let me ask a little more philosophical question. I’d really like to hear both brothers respond to what might be called the challenge of Friedrich Nietzsche, which assumes a large place in Christian...
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I Think We Love Precipices: Richard Burton’s Death Wish
[Dylan Thomas] was ultimately of course a very tragic man wasn’t he? Well I suppose so, he sought his own death and he found it, which is not entirely tragic. He certainly wrote of course the most...
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There Is a Season
To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, And a time to heal;...
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Christopher Hitchens and His Mother
“I mustn’t pretend to remember more than I really do, but I am very aware that it makes a great difference to have had, in early life, a passionate lady in one’s own corner… I am speaking of the time...
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Time for Silence
“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don’t be...
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The Occasional Pleasure of Advancing Years: Christopher Hitchens on the...
“In some ways, the photograph of me with Martin and James is of ‘the late Christopher Hitchens.’ At any rate, it is of someone else, or someone who doesn’t really exist in the same corporeal form. The...
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The Greatest Debate of All Time: Hitchens Versus Galloway on Iraq
It’s often tricky to identify “the best” of a certain category. But with debates, ironically enough, the question is, at least to my mind, settled. There are a lot of nominees for second place:...
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On Life with a Death Sentence: Reflections on 25 Years Since the Salman...
On February 14th, 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwā against the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie, in retaliation for Rushdie’s allegedly blasphemous book The Satanic Verses....
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